Carbon offsetting projects can do more than compensate for carbon emissions: there is the potential for long-term social impact as well.

What are community-based projects?

Carbon projects help to counteract the release of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Carbon offsetting is a climate action that enables you to address your CO2 emissions by supporting projects that verifiably reduce, capture, or avoid a proportional amount of CO2 emissions.

A ‘community-based project’ is a term applied to a carbon offsetting project that centres and benefits local communities while also taking climate action. The best community projects are participatory and employ the community's own knowledge and decision-making processes.

How it works: reducing carbon emissions while improving livelihoods

One common type of community-based project helps to introduce new energy-efficient methods in communities worldwide, such as clean cookstoves.

From economic empowerment and independence from lowered prices, to gender balancing impacts, a clean cookstove project can provide a variety of benefits for local communities.

For example, the female-led Solar Cooker Project in Darfur provides refugees with the necessary material, knowledge and training to make their own CooKit solar cookers to prepare their meals using energy from the sun.

How does this help the refugees? The cookers prevent the inhalation of harmful smoke, save people a lot of time, and considerably improve their safety.

Since the war started in Darfur, more than 200,000 Sudanese have fled to Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world. In the semi-desert border region, the refugees have been living in refugee camps for more than 15 years where they rely on scarce wood for cooking. As an even extra benefit, every workplace is fully run by around 20 women.

Another project in our portfolio is the Cooking Stoves in India Project, which aims to provide energy-efficient improved cook stoves (ICS) in domestic households across India.

Traditional cooking methods are harmful to people’s health - especially women who prepare meals - causing indoor air pollution which kills over a million people each year in India. This also requires a lot of firewood, which depletes forests and emits greenhouse gases.

The improved cookstoves reduce the smoke produced by burning the fuel, providing a safer, healthier home and significantly reducing the consumption of firewood. The project also encourages the exchange of ideas and knowledge with employees on the ground to ensure the technology can continually improve.

Offset your emissions while supporting local communities along the way

Address your individual or company carbon emissions, or allow your customers the option to do so, while also supporting local communities.

At CHOOOSE, we provide access to projects that protect the people and the planet. Our partners have access to a diverse portfolio of climate projects that range from nature-based solutions to community-based solutions, and renewable energy.

By supporting community-based projects, you can offset your unavoidable emissions—reducing your overall environmental impact—while helping local communities along the way.

Book a demo to see how CHOOOSE can help you find the highest quality climate projects to support. >